Vacation Wildwood

Recently, I took my family on a trip from the Pennsylvania Wilds to visit with some friends, Jim and Nidia and their lovely boys Nicky and Alex in the New Jersey “Wilds” of Wildwood, which is near the NJ equivalent of our “Wilds” the Pine Barrens. We drove through the Pine Barrens several times while there. We did see the Jersey Devil, but not in the Barrens in Wildwood. The Jersey Devil that we saw was a large fishing trawler getting maintenance at a wharf.

Recreating at the shore had a lot in common with our home area here. First off, we still had to deal with a lot of Pennsylvania tourists (besides ourselves). Like here; that area also gets vacationers from all over the country and even some foreign countries. You could also find solace and quiet time but rather than going to the woods to find it, we went out on the water. When you think about it, if you consider the area size to number of people and lack of facilities in the blue space between the US and great Great Britain, you can’t get much wilder than that. Like here, there were plenty of things to do outdoors at the shore.

The girls did beaches and shops and we all did different versions of boat rides; from bigger boats to kayaks. Our friends are avid boaters and their main boating passion is jet skiing in the ocean…or anywhere else and we did plenty of that. It was the first time I’d been on such a ski since a short jaunt for familiarization in 1995…much has changed. Jim gave me a 15 second lesson where I learned to push a button and pull a throttle and out to sea we went. After navigating it to a gas dock and through marked navigation channels amongst a lot of sea faring traffic…what could go wrong? Once in a bay Jim, who rides like he lives, at full speed yelled, “Hit it!” His Jet Ski rose to what appeared to be about four feet out of the water and it took off at a forward speed that reminded me of George Jetson on his spacecraft, weaving (safely) through a winding channel and traffic. At this point I should do a footnote that boats have no breaks. When a watercraft reaches, approximately, 60 miles an hour in 2.6 seconds and continues to accelerate from there, there isn’t much time to say, “What?” before it is gone. Within, seconds the new wake from Jim’s ski was about a mile away and becoming a distant speck… so, I hit it. Then I let off it…then hit it again…and left off it again…Wow.

Decades of experience in all kinds of boats did not prepare me for the experience of accelerating on that vehicle at that speed and, believe it or not, neither did my “degree” from graduating the fifteen second class. Rising up and taking off is freaky; you would think that at high speed slight maneuvers would be necessary, like with a car or motorcycle or even many boats to steer but this is not so. Taking the large maneuvers feels risky and you need some time to get the feel of it and probably not at 60mph in 2.6 seconds. This is really an interesting lesson when a 25’ Grady White on plane is closing in from the rear off your starboard side while a fishing boat is trying to figure out which direction you’re going as it closes from the port front all while everyone is trying to stay within the narrow channel marked by buoys that I didn’t want to dent. I dropped the ski back down but continued to persevere. Jim came back and though disappointed by my inability to keep up, patiently put me through another extended 8 second or so course on operating a jet ski.

As it turned out, Jim was a good teacher (he must have used a shortened version of Nidia’s techniques, who actually is a good teacher… or hypnotization…which at that point I’d have been fine with) and not long after that, I was enjoying the sensation of gliding over water at very high speeds followed by jumping waves out in the open ocean. Once I was confident that I could keep up with Jim without becoming the main subject of a fatal boat accident report starting with, “A 50 year old man, apparently severely under the influence of hypnotization struck a bridge piling…” we took the kids out. Everyone’s favorite activity was jumping waves. Dana told me to slow down a lot, Shannon told me to jump higher and Nick kept saying, “Go faster!” (Unfortunately, Rowan had to stay home and work to fund her college education.)

We did a lot of good eating…believe it or not, fresh seafood is not the equivalent of fresh stocked trout and you decide which way the scale is tipped on that one. We did some board walking, which is a little different than mainstreeting in Emporium. It is hard to find an equivalent to the rides there that involve being shot into, spun around in and dropped from very high places here in our Wilds but I’m sure someone has managed somehow…riding an elk? To hold off any homesickness, the sounds of humans at night from the boardwalk did make me think of a pack of coyotes finding a hapless animal under a full moon.

Nick, Nicky and Alex shared their games and time together and did everything from swimming, to wrestling and playing blackjack together along with the three of them having quality indoor time playing video games until their “eyes bled” at night. Some time spent crab fishing with them was a highlight of Nick’s trip. You can do a lot of fishing here and you can catch crawdads but blue crabs provided a new experience. We spent a lot of quality time chatting and enjoying time with Jim and Nidia who showed us some very interesting places. Just like here, it is a real advantage to have some local knowledge of the area to navigate to the best spots.

See you along the stream